THISCLOSE et al

Boz and i were just on the phone talking (he's on his way home from an away game) and we cannot believe how CLOSE WE ARE TO BEING DTE!!!!

DTE is 'adoption talk' for Dossier to Ethiopia. That's when our 5 months worth of blood, sweat, tears and paperwork gets sent off to Ethiopia.

We are THISCLOSE people! All that's left is to wait on the approval from USCIS. And word has it... they're trying to get approval letters out in 30 days. I don't want to get too excited or anything... but.... AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! THRILLING!!!!

Okay, to recap the past few months:

May 5th we got a phone call telling us we were accepted into AWAA's Ethiopia Program!

* After that, it was a mad rush to collect 31 different documents...
* 19 of which had to be notarized....
* 2 had to be notarized and then sent to Indianapolis to be State Certified...
* We used 3 different notaries...
* Got complete physicals, including a lovely TB shot...
* Had blood work done...
* Got fingerprinted...
* Met with our social worker 3 times...
* Went through TEN (10) hours of Hague training...
* Put together 4 family photo pages...
* Received background checks and CPS clearances in TWO states...
* Had our home study started and completed in record time (thank you Kelly!!)...
* Wrote the all important APPLICATION LETTER (requesting permission from Ethiopia to adopt)..... this part was the best! It really brought things home.
* I'm sure I'm missing a few things here.

People, we're ADOPTING from ETHIOPIA! In a matter of months, we're going to have a little guy strolling these halls!! He's not going to be an orphan... he's not going to be "the lucky one"..... he's not going to be 'the kid we adopted'.... he's going to be our SON!! And WE'RE going to be PARENTS!!! We are going to be the LUCKY ONES who get to parent this little darling. Such an amazing responsibility and we already feel so BLESSED to be the ones who get to raise him. Imagine that, God is HAND PICKING OUR CHILD right now! This is something I'm pretty certain GOD had in the WORKS LONG BEFORE WE EVEN CONSIDERED IT. I was telling Boz the other night that I always felt sorta bad for never wanting to have kids. I wanted a family, but i never saw myself having them (the thought of that is still so unnatural to me) but i saw myself with kids. Now i don't feel bad, because i TRULY BELIEVE that GOD planned this all out. He didn't put a desire in me to HAVE kids.... but He put in me a DESIRE to CARE FOR KIDS WHO DON'T HAVE ANYONE. This wasn't an accident. This isn't something i feel bad about (not having that elusive biological clock ticking away), this is God's will working itself out in our lives. HOW AMAZING!

Knowing that God has this all planned out gives us such PEACE. However, that being said... would you please keep us in your prayers?? We would LOVE to have the approval letter by the end of the month! Our goal is to be DTE by the time we have our FUNdraising dinner. But if we aren't... we're okay with that too!! The only downside with being DTE is the cost that's associated with it. In order to get our paperwork overseas and into the hands of those in Ethiopia, we need to come up with a big chuck of change.... $7,700 to be exact. Here's the breakdown for that:

Courier Service ~ $150

2nd Installment of Program Fee ~ $2,000

Post Adoption Report Deposit (fully refundable if all post-adoption reports are returned on time) ~ $1,000

Dossier Service & Translation ~ $800

1/2 International Program Fee (1 child) ~ $3,750 (this includes the development project program fee, our child's medical exams, orphanage donation, and child-rearing fees at the transition house ~ once you accept the referral of a child they're taken from the orphanage and place in AWAA's transition home)

I know we've said this before, but we'll say it again. WE COULD NOT HAVE DONE THIS WITHOUT YOUR LOVE AND SUPPORT!! SO MANY OF YOU HAVE GONE ABOVE AND BEYOND WHAT WE COULD IMAGINE AND WE ARE SO THANKFUL!